In a client server architecture there is often the demand to convert business data values from an internal server side representation into an external client side representation and inversely. A simple example of such data is a date like 08/17/2011, which could have an internal format 20110817 and multiple possible external formats such as 17.08.2011 (or others that are not based on the Gregorian calendar). Note that the representation could depend on the region from which the service is called. Other examples include timestamps, status codes, etc.
Current server applications expose the data values of structured business data in a fixed representation, often even in an internal but non-human readable format. A common solution to this problem is to implement some logic in the client to adjust this data representation to a desired format. In the emerging technology of mobile business scenarios, there are more and more clients that will be used “out of the box” and where the consumer of a service has no control over the client implementation. Thus there is a growing need to shift the control over the data values into the service calls and to enable the clients to be configured differently for the client side value representation.
Accordingly, what is needed is a solution to have client side control over the data values exposed by a consumed service.